With [1]Blender 5.0 having nice Vulkan API support that's now grown mature, Blender developers are contemplating on potentially removing OpenGL support in Blender 6.0.

No decision has been made yet but considerations are underway by Blender developers on deprecating the OpenGL API use and removing it with the Blender 6.0 release.

Yesterday's EEEVEE and Viewport module meeting [2]notes confirmed the OpenGL deprecation and removal being something under consideration:

"Internal proposal to remove OpenGL support in Blender 6.0 (November 2027). It hasn’t been decided yet as virtual texturing would be a blocker for this."

Virtual texturing appears to be the main blocker for removing OpenGL support from this 3D modeling software.

[3]

With Blender 5.5 being a Long Term Support (LTS) release, this would be the last point for those on aging OpenGL-only platforms to continue using this open-source software. Then again any system not supporting the Vulkan API is quite old at this point and even more so when going to late 2027 and beyond.



[1] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Blender-5.0-Released

[2] https://devtalk.blender.org/t/2026-10-05-viewport-eevee-module-meeting/45885

[3] https://www.phoronix.com/image-viewer.php?id=2026&image=blender_opengl_lrg